Machine maintenance is subject to various requirements as defined by manufacturers, regulatory agencies, and machine operators. These requirements may concern safety issues and/or other technical issues for various parts of the machine. These requirements are typically documented. Such documents include, for example, maintenance manuals, Maintenance Review Board (MRB) documents, structural repair manuals, wiring diagrams, general engineering manuals, and the like. The maintenance data from these documents may be stored in various formats and/or databases on the maintenance system.
Generally, the maintenance requirements originate from the manufacturer. When a machine is purchased, the owner receives various manuals and documents from the manufacturer that describe how to maintain the machine. These documents are often quite lengthy and complex (i.e., on average, each document may include many tasks). Each document may include various information including, but not limited to maintenance labor-hours estimates for tasks; facilities and tooling recommendations; recommended discretionary maintenance tasks improving maintenance economics, serviceability, and the like; and administrative process and planning information, including packing strategies.
To ensure that the machine is in compliance with the mandatory maintenance requirements, the machine is typically subject to routine checkups. Such a maintenance schedule is described in these documents as well. Because machines have many different components, some parts require checkups more frequently than others do. These routine checkups may take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks.
Taking into account all of the aforementioned factors, engineers translate these documents into an operator-specific maintenance program when the maintenance requirement documents are received. These operator specific maintenance programs are then configured into job cards. The job cards are then grouped into work packages based on their maintenance schedule. Actual maintenance is performed according to the job cards on their effective dates.
These requirements are, however, constantly updated as any of the above mentioned entities may deem fit. These updates may involve various parts, which may have different maintenance plans and/or maintenance schedules. Additionally, it is also common for one operator to have more than one machine of different manufacturer and models, each of which requires its own maintenance requirements to maintain its workable condition. Thus, the maintenance system must be smart enough to determine which machine will be affected by the updated maintenance requirement, how it is to be applied to different machines, and when. Because the operator is responsible for the workable order of the machine, it is important to have a reliable monitoring system that keeps track of all these maintenance plans and schedules as well as updates.
Gathering the disparate and distributed required maintenance data in order to get a clear view of the maintenance status of a machine and its maintenance requirements can be problematic. The data may be stored in different formats and at different storage facilities, such that the operators responsible for maintaining the machine waste time tracking down and then consolidating the data in a manner that may help them assess the machine. Moreover, some data may be unintentionally omitted because the operators are unaware of it. The likelihood of such an omission increases when new or modified maintenance requirements are sent from regulatory agencies, manufacturers, and/or other operators. Or when mobile machines, e.g., aircraft and automobiles, are serviced in different places geographically. There is no seamless way for the new or modified requirements to be merged with the existing requirements. Furthermore, there is no way to perform quick and easy monitoring and analysis of the machine's workability.
Today, no known system provides a machine maintenance system or method that copes with all of the aforementioned obstacles. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a way to manage maintenance plans including data from various sources in a single point of entry for ease of access, analysis, and display.